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April 6, 2017

Shoplifters

The recent decision of a judicial review to compel the Human Rights Commission to accept a complaint set me to wondering."Counsel for the Commission referred to the "sheer volume" of inquiries." says the decision, making it sound like the HRC Is busy, busy.On their website, the HRC says "Most human rights complaints are now resolved through a process called a Resolution Conference" and there are no current statistics about this. A 2001 report says they have a backlog of 200 complaints.

They do list the decisions of all "Boards of Inquiry" over the years. "If the parties have been unable to resolve the complaint through a resolution conference, a recommendation may be made by the human rights officer to the Commissioners to refer the matter to a Board of Inquiry." 128 Decisions since 1979 is about 3.5 decisions per year. The HRC Has a staff of 24.5 and a $2.5 million budget. The average salary is $84,600. You could estimate the average cost per decision using today's HRC budget, but that would be a scary exercise.

Here's a summary of the Board of Inquiry Decisions over the years by "Prohibited Area"You see quite a steady stream of decisions from 2003 - 2007, then a sharp dropoff until 2012, then a huge increase followed by a steady decline. I'd guess the recent decline is due to the dominant use of the resolution conference (AKA mediation).Within Prohibited Areas, decisions are assigned Protected Characteristic:

Employment and Disability are at issue in 31 of 128 Boards of Inquiry. Nothing else comes close.My real question is about Resolution Conferences. I imagine the records are sealed. What if there's a pattern? Sexual Harassment by a particular individual? Women paid less than men in a municipality? Racial profiling by a retailer?Taking that last as an example, something caused the HRC to study profiling in 2013. Through a survey and focus groups, they conclude that profiling is endemic.

• Overall, 11.0% of respondents had been searched as a consumer in the past 12 months.

One in One Thousand - The forgotten legacy of James McGregor Stewart

James McGregor Stewart, 1889-1955, son of a Pictou lawyer, grandson of a Cape Breton minister, was a principal of Stewart, McKelvey, the downtown Halifax law firm. In his time he was Nova Scotia’s premier corporate lawyer, and he wrote the rules for many of our most successful and long-lived companies. He was president of the Canadian Bar between the wars. He is one of fewer than 500 Canadians to be awarded the Commander of the British Empire for services to the Empire in WW II. His obituary was in the New York Times.
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